This is a film by Jenny van Sommers using jellies made by Bompas & Parr.
“Jellies all have distinct personalities and everybody relates to a different one,” says van Sommers of the appeal of each delectable that marks her first foray into film. “The one on the bottom right is a bit of a shoe-gazer (like me). Then there's the super-extrovert on the top right-hand side. The orange jelly is the person who is always in a good mood. And the brown one is the person at the disco who is standing there and then suddenly gets a burst of energy and really goes for it, then gets embarrassed and stops dancing. He's a bit of a weirdo."
The song is “Let Go of Letting Go” by Social Skills. -via Everlasting Blort
Emily McDowell is an illustrator, greeting card designer, and a cancer survivor. Now she’s put her experience to work in creating a line of greeting cards that cancer patients and survivors say really hit the mark. The line of eight greetings are called Empathy Cards.
The most difficult part of my illness wasn’t losing my hair, or being erroneously called “sir” by Starbucks baristas, or sickness from chemo. It was the loneliness and isolation I felt when many of my close friends and family members disappeared because they didn’t know what to say, or said the absolute wrong thing without realizing it.
You can order yours here. And continue reading to see the rest of the collection. One contains NSFW language.
Photographer Antti Karppinen put together a gallery of Star Wars cosplay portraits specifically for Star Wars Day (all with light sabers). Most were taken at Cardiff Film & Comic Con 2015 in March. See Karppinen’s portraits of other awesome cosplayers from the Welsh con here. And May the fourth be with you. -Thanks, Antti Karppinen!
The stories behind several pretend cockroaches you may or may not be acquainted with. (And one that might not even be a cockroach at all.)
1. MUSICAL COCKROACH
La Cucaracha (“the cockroach” in Spanish) is the name of a Mexican folk song that you may remember singing as a kid (at least the “la cucaracha” part). The song’s exact origins are unknown. It goes back to at least the early 19th century and possibly much farther— even to 15th-century Spain. The song became popular during the Mexican Revolution (1910– 1920). Many of the best-known stanzas (there are hundreds) reflect revolutionary politics of that period, although the meanings of the lyrics are symbolic and satirical. (In other words, nobody really knows what they mean.) One theory is that the lyrics are meant to poke fun at leaders on both sides of the Revolution. Here’s one of the most popular stanzas, translated into English: “The cockroach, the cockroach / cannot walk anymore / because it’s lacking, because it doesn’t have / marijuana to smoke.” (That last line, believed to be a jab at President Huerta, who was known as a drunkard, is often changed to something more innocuous, such as “lemonade to drink,” when sung around kids.)
2. OPPRESSED ANIME COCKROACHES
The 1987 Hiroaki Yoshida anime/live-action film Twilight of the Cockroaches is about a community of intelligent cockroaches who live peacefully in the apartment of a human slob named Seito. (The cockroaches are anime; the humans are live-action.) But when Seito’s girlfriend moves in, she begins exterminating, and the cockroaches’ paradise becomes a nightmarish struggle for survival. According to Yoshida, the film’s cockroaches are a metaphor for the Japanese people, whom he deems a “hated species.” Washington Post reviewer Richard Harrington wrote that the film “could do for cockroaches what The Secret of NIMH did for rats: humanize them in ways you’d never have thought possible.” (That didn’t happen, as you may have noticed.)
One of the strangest scenes: The teenage cockroach heroine, Naomi, almost loses her life in a rainstorm, but is saved… by a pile of talking dog poop. Twilight of the Cockroaches was the inspiration for the 1996 musical film Joe’s Apartment, about a guy whose apartment is inhabited by singing, dancing cockroaches.
You know when you hear a movie idea so great, you think there’s no way anyone could mess it up? Then along comes Snakes on a Plane and then Cowboys and Aliens. Both offered an irresistible combination that ended up being rather disappointing. Those two movies were the first thing I thought of when I heard about Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs. Then I thought about Valley of the Gwangi, which was a pretty good movie for its day. But then I watched the trailer for Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs.
This is no Valley of the Gwangi. But it might have all the charm of Sharknado if you watch it expecting an unintentional comedy. MarVista Entertainment will release Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs not in theaters, but in digital HD and On Demand May 19. -via Uproxx
David Letterman is retiring later this month after 22 years of The Late Show on CBS. The show put together this tribute to Dave’s most memorable moments with his some of his guests. -via Tastefully Offensive
City Council meetings are usually pretty dry affairs, and even more so when it’s not your town. This is an exception. During a council meeting in Georgetown, Texas, a councilman leaves to relieve himself in the men’s room. But he forgot to turn off the microphone he was wearing. Rachael Jonrowe tries to make her point while he’s gone, but cannot contain herself when the bathroom audio starts. -via Daily Picks and Flicks
Ryuji Imai is a real Bruce Lee fan. He has the moves from his movies memorized, and can recreate them with his nunchaku. And Ryuji is only five years old! In this video, he recreates a fight scene from the 1972 film Game of Death. He doesn’t even have to see the movie to know what’s coming next. -via Viral Viral Videos
The Labyrinth Table is a coffee table designed by Benjamin Nordsmark that has a detailed maze underneath its glass top. Even though its enclosed, you can try to solve this maze: it has 6 little figurines of people inside.
Move them around with the help of handles that you run under the table. When you’re through, the handles will stick anywhere on the table, so you can’t lose them. Unlike a full-size labyrinth, the people in this one won’t panic or starve if you run into a dead end or leave them for days without moving. See the Labyrinth Table in action in this video. -via Laughing Squid
I lived near Memphis, Tennessee, when The Pyramid was built on the banks of the Mississippi in 1991. It was supposed to be a shining symbol of the city, defining its skyline and drawing people to the downtown river area. I saw Van Halen perform there. But that was a long time ago. The Memphis Grizzlies signed a contract that gave them control over the use of the Pyramid, and then found the construction to be so shoddy that they had their own arena built elsewhere and moved out in 2004. The Pyramid sat unused for over ten years. Until last Wednesday.
The 32-story, 535,000-square foot building is now a Bass Pro Shop. Really. In fact, it’s an entire theme park for outdoorsmen, with its own swamp, hotel, bowling alley, archery range, shooting range, laser arcade, restaurants, and more.
The result of the makeover is impressive. The cypress swamp covers most of the ground floor. Moss dangles from fake trees, and the watery bog is dotted with stuffed wild pigs and other animals.
Surrounding the swamp are various retail sections with hand-painted wall murals of idyllic outdoor scenes. The fishing section contains about 30,000 items. A general store will sell homemade fudge. The 13-lane bowling alley has a water motif with fish dangling from the ceiling and ball returns shaped like alligator mouths. There's also an interactive duck hunting game.
An elevator takes visitors up to The Lookout at the Pyramid, a restaurant and bar with an observation deck providing panoramic views of the river and city.
Rooms at the Big Cypress Lodge were inspired by hunting camps. They have a rustic feel, with dark wood trim and private porches with rocking chairs.
So beware, if you ask Dad where he’s like to go for vacation this year, he may suggest Memphis, and now you know why. -via BroBible
Every action movie trailer follows the same formula in the past twenty years or so. The formula is so established that I’m often a bit confused as to whether this is a new trailer or something I’ve seen before. Red Letter Media lays out the formula.
Establishing shot of a city. Bwaaaaaam! (often the sound familiar from Inception) Mysterious, cryptic, and vague lines. Make your characters look cool. Build up to silence, then BAM! Action Montage! And don’t forget the powerful and/or inspiring monologue. End montage with another cut to quiet. Eh, throw in a laser shooting into the sky. Why not? Title. (finally) Clever and/or funny end tag before release date.
Each trope is illustrated with more examples than you can shake a stick at, if you were so inclined. -via Boing Boing
Two days ago, NASA’s MESSENGER orbiter crashed onto the surface of Mercury, after 11 years of exploration. Its final Tweet was enough to bring a tear to your eye.
Well I guess it is time to say goodbye to all my friends, family, support team. I will be making my final impact very soon.
It inspired Becky Ferreira to look at other robotic space explorers and how we regard them as sentient beings, gladly sacrificing themselves for the greater good. A lot of that is due to NASA’s habit of setting up first-person Twitter accounts for spaceships, probes, and rovers, in order to engage the public. But NASA isn’t the only space agency that does that.
Indeed, MESSENGER isn’t even the first spacecraft to have live-tweeted its own death, and it certainly wasn’t the most melodramatic about it. That award goes to China’s Yutu lunar rover. In January 2014, the Yutu published a series of tearjerker posts on its Weibo account, after a malfunction threatened its life.
Whoever was operating Yutu’s account milked the situation to the fullest, and even brought up the rover’s thoughts about how its “mother”—the Chang’e 3 lander—would react to its death.
"[Chang'e] doesn't know about my problems yet," the Yutu Weibo account said. "If I can't be fixed, everyone please comfort her."
We envisioned the Philae lander as a cartoon character when it landed on a comet. We all cheered when the Mars Curiosity rover landed so spectacularly on the red planet. Even its creators treated “her” like a child who left home and made good. It was a real contrast to the sadness we felt when the Spirit rover shut down after six years of work -the feisty robot was only scheduled to last three months.
Weird Al Yankovic finally received his engraved 2015 Grammy Award, so he took the opportunity to parody all those unboxing videos while he opened it. This is actually Weird Al’s fourth Grammy: he won one each in 1984, 1988, and 2004, too. -via Viral Viral Videos
Dominik M. Schwarz has always been fascinated with maps. He's also traveled a lot, and he wanted a big world map -the size of an entire wall, with detailed information and place names. Like many of us, he wanted to stick pins in the places he'd been. He couldn’t find the map he wanted for sale, so he made his own!
That doesn’t mean the process was easy. There’s the data collection, the image stitching, testing it on the wall, finding a printer for such a large one-off project, mounting the map, attaching it to the wall, and finding the perfect pins. Every step was more complicated than you’d think, and there were many ideas discarded along the way. Schwarz spent a year and a half on the project, and posted each step with pictures. He’s quite happy with the results. -via Metafilter
